User blog:Cougarcat/Season 9 Review
So we've finally reached the Final Season of River Monsters. Since this Season was released in the year 2017, there is a much higher chance that there are some episodes that you haven't watched, as opposed to Season 1 made in 2009. If you have not watched all of the episodes, I please be aware that I will include spoilers in my Review. We will be judging this season by Location, Monster Variety, Monster originality, Mystery, Culture, and of course Monster Size. Naturally some of these categories are quite subjective, so keep in mind that my ratings will not necessarily be the "right" ones. The 2017 Season was dubbed "The Final Season", as it was made to be the last season of River Monsters. I read somewhere in the marketing that "Jeremy saved the best for last". Was this really true? After all the awesome seasons that came before, could Season 9 really have been the very best? Did it really stack up to the masterpiece that is River Monsters? I hope this review will help you find out. Ratings will be in stars out of five 'Location-' Location could easily be the least subjective category, and I find it hard to debate that the Location variety in Season 9 is seriously just the best. Every episode is set in a new and exciting place with scenery that blew me away. In one episode, Jeremy travelled into a 25,000 foot deep oceanic trench (although he didn't go anywhere near the bottom) and in another episode he was in the foothills of the tallest mountains on earth. In one episode, Jeremy travelled to a fiery volcanic island, and in another he went to the freezing Arctic circle. Then we have one shot in the misty, eerie jungles of Malaysia, and one more shot in a bright tropical coral reef. My Rating - *****(Perfect Score!!!!!!!!!!!) 'Monster Variety- '''While every culprit in this Season was a fish, the mosnter variety was still very high. One particular example of this would be the Needlefish . A small but deadly killer that pierced through someone's eye. I feel like this was the type of "small fish" episode that so many later seasons lacked, where there was one small but deadly killer tucked in as its own unique monster, and not a season made almost entirely of small fish. The other one that was really interesting was the Cookiecutter Shark . I really liked the idea of a small cartilaginous monster that finally explained the amazing number of circular bite marks that were found on fish of the area, and on victims of the Laconia incident. My Rating- **** '''Monster origionality- '''Now we're getting to Monster originality. This was one area where Season 9 didn't score so well. Don't get me wrong, There were plenty of new and exciting monsters featured in this Season, but at the same time, there were plenty of fish that were culprits in previous episodes, specifically the Greenland Shark , Goonch , and Sareng . Did this take away from my experience with this season? Not really. This season was about "facing the monsters that still haunted Jeremy Wade", and the fact that there were recurring culprits actually made it more... shall we say "epic". But, still, we scored every other season like this, so we're not going to change for the final season. My Rating- *** '''Mystery- '''This is another category where I feel like Season 9 did better than any of the others. "Amazon Apocalypse" was an amazing episode, and I love it, but the Laconia incident featured in "Killers from the Abyss" was even more epic. There are two other episodes that I want to commend here. In "Coral Reef Killer", Jeremy ponders how a beast could punch a hole through diving goggles and a woman's head in one attack. In the episode "Volcanic Island Terror", Jeremy searches for a monster so secret that even the locals who live off the island have were unable to identify the killer that attacked them. My Rating- *****(Perfect Score!!!!!!!!!!!) '''Culture-' ''' '''Culture did have a prescense in Season 9, just maybe not a bigger one than it had in some of the other seasons. But when you think about it, we saw traditional Inuit techniques in "Ice Cold Killer", ingenious capture methods in "Coral Reef Killer" to rival those in "Tribal Fishing", spearfishermen who dive 100 feet to catch their quarry in "Volcanic Island Terror", and of course a secluded tribe in "Malaysian Lake Monster". So I would surely say that this Season beat almost all of the others except Season 3. My Rating- **** '''Monster Size- '''I think that the cumulative weight of the monsters in this Season probably far surpasses that of any other Season. In "Killers from the Abyss", we saw the biggest monster Jeremy ever caught by far, weighing around 1,100-pounds, and then we saw a 700-pound Greenland Shark in "Ice Cold Killer". While the other fish were of less exciting weight, the Black Bass still looked pretty impressive. So to give the season with the two biggest fish caught on River Monsters anything less than a perfect score would be rather unfair. My Rating- *****(Perfect Score!!!!!!!!!!!) Over All Rating 5/5(Perfect Score!!!!!!!!!!!) So now you know my opinion. Season 9 was truly my favorite River Monsters season. There were two complaints I heard. Some called in "Ocean Monsters" because half of the episodes were set in the ocean. However, they did not go all-out like they did in Season 8, and to be honest with you there was still unfinished business for Jeremy in the ocean (like catching an actually sort of impressive Greenland Shark). I think loation variety in River Monsters is great, and this season definitely has that. The other one purely affects episode 4, "Return of the Killer Catfish". Its another episode where Jeremy could not catch his culprit, and some people would even say that this undermines the legendary episode "Killer Catifsh". Do I agree? No. When I first watched it, I felt like it was a real let down, but then I realized something. If it were any other monster, I would consider it a let down, but not the Goonch. If any monster desreved to tie with Jeremy, then it would be the Goonch Catfish. When I watched it over, I realized how amazing the setting and investigation were, and its now one of my 5 favorite River Monsters episodes. Thanks for reading yet another one of my rants. I may review Mighty Rivers in the future, but since it is a different show than River Monsters I will have to invent a new scoring system. I may also rank the seasons in order of least favorite to favorite, and rank my 10 favorite episodes. Until then, thank you all for reading, and I look forward to seeing you again. Category:Blog posts